


dearly departed

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: yours ‘til the earth starts to crumble and the heavens roll away [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Inspired by Music, Other, the vague unlabeled relationship between the horsepersons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: What happens to creatures that live in the minds of humans when there are no humans left?





	dearly departed

_I crossed my heart_

_But I stuttered too_

_So truth or dare_

_Was I good to you?_

 

_\- Dearly Departed, Marianas Trench_

* * *

 

In the far corner of a burning, dying world, four beings wait for everything to be over. They are quiet, still, hollow, knuckles pale on the stems of wine glasses that won’t fill with anything but water, free hands gripping fabric, nails digging into flesh, bone pressing into leather gloves and jackets and sweat-slick skin.

One of them, the bearded shadow in a jacket that seems to be drowning him, tries to smile, flashes his companions a facsimile grin, thin and terrified. “So, when the last of them is gone, we’ll just… stop.”

They all know, none of them want to hear. The woman in red, far less hypnotizing than the stories would make her out to be, auburn hair clipped short and dark eyes hooded, the paint on her fingernails chipping, grips her wineglass until it shatters, cutting into her palm. The man beside her, pale and twitching, white eyes wide with terror (he’s had less time than all of them, far less) takes her hand, presses his lips to her bloody palm, lets go when his pale lips are stained red and she holds a handful of glass shards in her unmarked palm.

She bites her lip, either lipstick or blood on her teeth, rakes the table with her nails, looks at Death, dressed somewhere between his two forms, biking leathers under a black cloak, his helmet visor open, grinning skull hidden by the way his head is bowed, one finger tapping on the table every few minutes. They know he’s counting deaths, counting down until the end. “Will you be taking us?” she asks.

It takes him a moment to respond. He is not there, after all, he is in every corner of the world, guiding the last of the humans to an afterlife that will burn around them soon enough. He lifts his head, empty smiles and empty sockets, exhaustion in everything they see of him. NO. THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO GO.

“Will you…” the words are hard to say, dragging themselves out of Pollution’s throat, between teeth that don’t quite chatter but aren’t quite still. “Stay?”

ANGELS AND DEMONS CAN STILL DIE. AND THEIR WAR WILL BEGIN SOON.

War reaches over, grabs his sleeve and holds it tight, clinging. “How long?”

“How long will you be alone, she means to say.” Famine puts his feet up on the table, feigning calm, but his eyes have the same empty, hopeless terror as the rest. Death turns to look at him, stares down at the worn table again.

TIME HAS CEASED TO MATTER. His head tilts, posture radiating frustration even though his expression remains the same. WILL CEASE. BY THE TIME THE FINAL WAR BEGINS.

War scowls. “That’s not an answer, lord.”

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE ME SAY.

They all start to speak at once, cut themselves off, fall silent.

“We know what happens to beings when they’re alone,” War says eventually, picking the last of the polish off her nails. “That’s easier to think about than the fact that we’re about to cease to exist.”

It’s Famine’s turn to reach for her hands, pinning them to the table to stop her nervous fidgeting. “Then let’s not talk about it, eh, Red?”

There’s a radio playing music in the background, because one of them wanted a distraction with enough clarity to create one. They don’t listen, can’t listen, tuning out everything but the sound of three near-human bodies breathing and the quiet rattle of bones.

“How many left, lord?” Pollution asks, fingers curling against bone and leather and deceptively soft fabric. “How long?”

THOUSANDS STILL, BUT DWINDLING. AND ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO KNOW?

“It’s better than wondering.” A new voice says, and three of the four of them turn, comedically, to the newcomer, tall and pale and grinning.

PESTILENCE. Death says. COME TO JOIN US FOR THE END?

"Yeah.” He leans against the table, head thrown back, eyes closed. Dark fingers curl around his wrist, feel a racing pulse that has only even been a formality. Pestilence moves fluidly, slowly, turning his wrist to take Famine’s hand, kissing his knuckles.

A trembling silence, then their hands slip apart. The retired horseperson pulls the rubber band from his hair and shoots it at his replacement, biting his lip and trying to smile. War takes his hand next, pulls him down beside her, and four of them breathe as one. The fifth has never had a reason to draw breath, not even this close to end.

YOU EXIST ONLY IN HUMAN MINDS. Death says to War, before she can even ask. YOU WILL DISAPPEAR WHEN THE LAST OF THEM DIES, JUST LIKE THE OTHERS. The blue sparks in his empty sockets reignite. FIVE HUNDRED LEFT.

Time passes. It’s the first time they find themselves aware of it, drinking water from wine glasses and watching Death tap away the threads tying them to reality.

"Can’t we do something about it?” Pollution asks, soft and childlike and scared.

NORMAL ENTROPY TRIUMPHS. Death says, shaking his head, and they remember the first time he told them (he hadn’t been talking to them, he’d been talking to Adam, but they always heard him when he spoke) that, the last time the world ended.

“Will they make a new one?” Famine asks, unsure of when his hand ended up twisted in Death’s robe, unsure of how or why he should let go. “Will we come back?”

I DO NOT KNOW.

It’s the first thing he hasn’t known, for as long as he’s existed. It means no. It means everything ends. It means whatever future might possibly exist is one that Death, the closest thing to omnipotent that anyone other than He can be, can’t see. It means goodbye.

“We should go back to the Garden.” Pestilence says, and suddenly that’s where they are, because little things like reality stopped mattering a while ago.  
They lie in the grass, hands linked, heads on each other’s laps and shoulders, silent.

They were all born in the Garden, one after another, Pestilence with the scores of pathogens created alongside the animals and plants and dark-skinned stumbling humans, Death with the flash of a dark throat swallowing the fruit of knowledge, Famine with the way the gates of the Garden closed behind them, shutting away paradise and comfort, War with Eve’s fingers curling around the hilt of the sword, Pollution with the first fire they lit with it's flames, with the smoke curling into the sky. They all have the Garden and the Serpent and the Angel to thank for their (too-short) existence, for all the days between then and now.

Death’s hand tap-tap-taps away their lives.

She is the first to fade, because the urge to fight disappears when survival becomes priority, and they cling to her and whisper empty promises and Death taps his skeletal finger in the grass and she is gone, snuffed out, because there is only one, now, and it takes two to fight a war.

_Tap._

Famine and Pestilence disappear in almost the same moment, hands clasped, staring at the trees, as the last human dies. No one left to starve or be ill, no minds left for them to live in.

Pollution is the last to go, curled up in the grass and convulsing, alone except for the skeletal hand on his shoulder, because he never lived in their minds at all, he lived in their chemical-soaked, smog-heavy planet, and he stays some horrid kind of alive while it burns.

Then he’s gone too, and the Garden is gone, and Death just _is_.

Entropy triumphs, and then Death and everything ceases to be.

 


End file.
